


Coffee Shop AU

by Megylovessaw



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Destiel if you squint - Freeform, Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Sabriel - Freeform, castiel (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 12:45:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9182386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megylovessaw/pseuds/Megylovessaw
Summary: Gabriel has read fanfiction, and throws the Winchesters into a coffee shop AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the very unoriginal title - hope you enjoy the actual content!

When Sam woke up that morning, he was not in the Impala and he wasn't in the sleazy motel he remembered going to sleep in; he and Dean had practically collapsed onto their beds after chasing a case all day. Sam hadn't noticed much of a difference at first when he woke up - his back felt sore but the cheap mattresses were always as comfortable as sleeping on a concrete slab. He first realised something was wrong when the warm and comforting smell of coffee roused him from his slumber, and Sam found his face pressed sideways down on a table and his back leant over it. He shot up, quickly wiping the drool away from the corner of his mouth with his shirt sleeve, and took in his surroundings. He was now upright in one of the chairs around the table, and there were several other tables around him. 

Sam couldn't remember ever falling asleep in the literal definition of a hipster cafe. 

The lights weren't on, but Sam's eyes were strained when the sun shone in through the glass windows, signifying early morning. He stretched his arms and shoved back the chair he had been sat in, making a horribly loud squeaking noise on the wooden floor. A shriek from behind the large block counter shocked Sam so much he practically jumped back, and he whipped his head towards the sound of the noise. 

His brother looked just as confused as he did. 

Sam slowly approached Dean, years of being a hunter suddenly plunging his brain into survival-mode and ready for some sort of attack. He carefully made his way around the counter to check his brother was okay, and a grumpy "what the hell?" was all Sam needed to know that he didn't have to worry about a shapeshifter or possession. 

Not that either of those creatures could have placed us here, Sam thought.

"Sam, could you please explain why I woke up on the floor of this place instead of to the sound of noisy motel neighbours or Cas popping up at some point in the night?"

Dean sounded agitated and his voice was more gruff than usual. 

"Maybe Castiel did do this," Sam said, though not confident in his statement. Even Castiel, who wasn't the most predictable or empathetic, had learnt to turn up first and explain himself before zapping them away somewhere else with his angelic abilities. 

"This definitely wasn't Cas," Dean shook his head, stomping around the counter to take a closer inspection at the internal area of the cafe. It was expectant of Dean now to take the angel's side, and Sam didn't like to argue about the one who "gripped him tight and raised him from perdition" because it would cause an argument that Sam didn't need at this moment in time. He was confused and annoyed as it was without Dean bringing a Castiel argument into it. 

Sam took Dean's place behind the counter to inspect some of the cups and the coffee machine that had turned itself on. He had never smelled something so comfortable and delightful as the fresh coffee beans scattered around, and the general scent of cakes and other assorted desserts on the trays beside him were like something he only vaguely remembered being as good in Stanford. 

"Son of a bitch!"

Sam jumped again to find Dean quickly shutting the main glass doors across from him and his brother pressing his weight on the frame as though something was going to break in. 

"What is it?" Sam said, rushing to his brother's aid, though it didn't seem as though there was anything behind the glass. There was some greenery that looked like a park on the corner of a few tall buildings and a main road connected them and the cafe together outside, and a few cars slowly drove by. 

Everything outside looked normal from the inside, like an early morning city scene. 

"Sammy, there's something not right with this."

"Tell me about it, Dean. What the hell happened out there?"

Dean shook his head and tried to understand what he'd just seen. 

"We can't leave."

 

***

 

"So we're basically stuck in the house from Beetlejuice?"

Dean nodded, frantically searching for another exit. Sam sighed, wandering around the cafe shop space and trying to figure out who or what could have possibly placed them there. 

"I'm telling you, Sam, it's all kinds of crazy out there. It's like something has warped all reality."

A lightbulb flickered on in Sam's head and he dashed behind the counter and aimlessly threw open drawers and cupboards in search until he found exactly what he was looking for. 

He grabbed as many of the cupcakes and brownies from their boxes and threw them down onto the counter, making his point obvious. 

"Sweet-tooth, Dean. It's the Trickster."

"I thought we'd moved on to Gabriel."

A flutter of wings and he was there, the archangel Gabriel, smiling smugly and practically beaming.

Sam frowned, remembering their past ordeals with him, but also trying to bring up the fact that he had saved their asses from the Devil himself at Elysian Fields. 

Gabriel furrowed his eyebrows.

"Don't I get a 'thanks for saving us before, Gabriel' or a 'glad you're not dead'? You guys are so self-centred."

"Gabriel what are we doing here? And why can't we leave?"

Gabriel groaned.

"We've played this game a million times, and sometimes I just like to have some fun! You guys ever heard of fanfiction?"

The brothers turned to each other and shared puzzled looks.

"Well, I've been reading up on Supernatural fanfiction lately, and there are these situations called AUs which are like specific universes that are in different stories. One of the more popular AUs is called a Coffee Shop AU, so I decided to dump you guys in one."

Sam was confused.

"What do you mean? We're in a fanfiction universe?"

"Exactly! And if you two can run a successful coffee shop in this reality then I'll take you both home. You get the drill."

*** 

"Honestly, Sam. Monster hunting I understand, but this? Why are there so many different kinds of coffee, and why do we have to wear aprons?"

Dean had knocked over another mug being clumsy, and he was in one of his rants again. He'd made the same points about how much he hated the barista idea over a thousand times. Sam had stopped listening to focus on his computer screen, where he researched as much as he could about the alternative fanfiction universe they had been plunged into. 

"So get this," Sam started, and then cringed because Dean had made him self aware of how much he said that, "people tend to write love stories about characters in this coffee shop scenario-"

"I'm going to stop you right there, Sam," Dean interrupted, slumping into the chair across from him, "if Gabriel wants us to kiss then I'm going to trudge out into that hell hole outside and kill him with my bare hands."

Sam rolled his eyes.

"Maybe it's not that literal, Dean. What if it's just something between one of us and a customer? It follows the generic plot of this AU."

Dean thought about it, head knocking the back of his chair. He shrugged.

"Could be. Or he could just want us to run this place. Either way, with us, it's going to take a while and we don't have that kind of time to waste on some Trickster's idea of fun."

Maybe he's got the wrong idea about you and Cas, Sam wanted to say, but didn't want to face the wrath of his brother that way. They'd had that particular argument countless times.

Instead, Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his sore eyes, shutting the laptop lid and pushing it away from him. He yawned, watching Dean slip away to the door that hid the staircase upstairs, marked with a sign reading, "staff."

"I'm going to try and sleep, then we'll figure this out in the morning. Maybe Gabriel has treated us with actual bedrooms and mattresses.”

***

The rain pounded loudly against Sam's bedroom window that night, and thunder was inevitable. Instinctively, Sam's body woke himself up to watch the lightning slash through the dark sky, and though his childlike curiosity was occupied, he knew none of it was real and had to stop himself from getting too attached to this version of reality. 

He threw over the covers and got out of bed, slowly making his way downstairs to the shop. Everything was defined through the large windows, and the rain was even more comfortable and cosy with the smell of coffee still lingering from the machines. Sam carefully turned on one of the dimmer lights and searched for a light snack in the storage cupboards to satisfy his midnight craving. 

"What're you doing up so late?"

The voice almost made Sam drop his oatmeal bar, and he found Gabriel studying him from the corner of the room. He somehow managed to take up the whole space there, even though he was barely tall enough to reach the top coffee cups on the shelf. 

The lightning struck again, as though it was edging closer and closer to the shop, and it made Gabriel's caramel eyes flash brighter and more mischievous than usual. He also had that slight smirk on his face that Sam couldn't decide on being friendly or manic. 

"The rain was too loud so I got up to get food. What about you?"

Sam pulled out a chair to lean back in by the glass and watch the rain. Gabriel marched over to him and snickered.

"Heard you bumbling around, and is that a damn oatmeal bar? What are you, a goat?"

Sam smiled as Gabriel sat down in the chair across from him and pulled out a dozen or so sweets from his jacket pockets. 

"How does your vessel have any teeth left?" Sam joked, looking from the rain to Gabriel, who was looking down at the table. He wondered how long the archangel had been possessing the poor bastard, and then on how long Gabriel had lived for in general. 

Longer than Sam could imagine. 

"You think so loudly," Gabriel said, cutting through the silence of Sam's internal questioning, "but you're right. Your mind couldn't even begin to comprehend the amount of time I've existed for and what I've seen."

He sounded annoyed. 

No, he sounded sad. And Sam had never heard Gabriel sound sad before.

"Is this-" Sam gestured vaguely at the shop, "is this from a memory? Have you been here before?"

Gabriel nodded. 

"I used to come here a lot because whoever was running the counter at that point was really hot-"

Sam sniggered and Gabriel smiled so wide it almost reached his eyes. 

"-but then I realised I liked coming here because it was a simple building that smelled nice and I could forget about my brothers fighting and the horrors in Heaven and on earth. In here I wasn't a trickster or an angel or even a person. I was just a being who came in regularly to gaze out the window and watch humans go about their daily business; lose myself in the amount of cars that passed by or the lives of other people in here."

"Wow," Sam replied after some time, "that's deep, Gabe."

"Shut up," Gabriel said, throwing a sweet wrapper at him, "I was trying to have a moment like you and your brother at the end of a hunt when you cry and talk about your feelings - and when did you start calling me 'Gabe'?"

Sam threw his own wrapper at the archangel and shrugged his shoulders.

"I dunno. We refer to Castiel as 'Cas' most of the time and we see you often enough now."

"I'm practically a Winchester."

"Yeah," Sam smiled again, looking back out at the dark sky. The rain was calming down but still making itself known on the window. The clouds had just slipped over a big white moon, shrouding it in grey, but the light still shone through, and Sam could see a few stars dotted around through the rain clouds. 

"It's so vivid and beautiful," Sam said without really thinking about it, "it's just weird for someone like you to like a place like this."

"Jeez, Sam, I can enjoy the little things y'know."

Another slash of lightning ripped through the sky, and Sam watched as Gabriel was mesmerised by the brightness of the light that had come with it. Gabriel looked at peace with the weather and the world at that moment, comfortable yet curious and one strand of hair falling over his face as he watched the nighttime world go by outside. 

Sam caught himself staring and then he couldn't stop. He was fixed on the way Gabriel's sleeves were just that bit too big and didn't completely reach his hands, and how he was taking everything in like a camera recording in those ever-changing coloured eyes. 

"Gabriel-"

Sam couldn't understand what possessed him to do what he did next. 

Sam, the rational and heavy thinker, was not using his head when he leant over the table to Gabriel across from him and kissed him. And when Gabriel didn't pull away, or in fact, when Gabriel leant in, Sam kissed him again. 

The third time, Sam cupped Gabriel's face in his hands, moving together, and Gabriel desperately tried to grab at Sam's collar to pull him closer because for some reason it all felt so nice.  

They fumbled at each other for a while, before Sam broke away to stand and move away from the table because it was too much space between them. Gabriel followed him round and joined Sam as he simply sat down on the floor. There they could hold each other closer in front of the glass, breathing heavily and knocking their foreheads together.

"Did we just make-out like a couple of teenagers?" Sam said after a while, still smiling like an idiot but not opening his eyes with his face pressed against Gabriel's.

"I think so," Gabriel replied, something much more genuinely cheery in his voice, and he giggled, pressing himself closer to Sam as though he wanted to block any and all space between them as another shot of lightning cast their merged silhouette across the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> constructive criticism is always welcomed!


End file.
